


The Sight Of The World

by sparrowinsky



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowinsky/pseuds/sparrowinsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steps a girl takes to become who she will be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sight Of The World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fivefootnothing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fivefootnothing/gifts).



Margaret was not the first babe in her mother’s belly, nor by far the last. She is not the only girl, or brilliant, or beautiful, graceful, charming, pious. Mainly she is Peg, who watches the littles and helps in the kitchen and doesn’t often say a word.  
   
Still, her mother favors her, always has. It isn’t the first chance at Christmas sweets that she gets, nor the newest coat and shoes, but something far better, something thrilling and dangerous, more meaningful than a bigger share of meat at dinner could ever be.  
   
Mother gives her knowledge, truth, speaks of how the world truly is. Not in the open, not where her father could hear, but she whispers over steaming tubs of laundry, breathes secrets through puffs of flour as they knead.  
   
It boils down to this: mistakes are made, but can be forgiven. The world is cruel. Do what must be done, and survive.  
   
Peg’s first job comes at age 14, in a lovely home of brick. She can hardly breathe the first time she steps inside, into a parlor with more windows than her entire home. The golden light glints over a glossy table the same rich black-brown as good earth, a table that likely cost more than her family made in two years of work. It turns her stomach, but she smiles for her new employer all the same.  
   
They call her Maggy, here. Peg is too Irish and Margaret too formal. She loathes the name, but she will abide it, for the food it puts in her family’s mouths. It’s easier to bite her tongue, do her work, slip a spoon into her apron when no-one is looking. The other two maids must know, but she stays quiet when Lucy hides half a bottle of bourbon and turns away silently when Mary lets her beau in through the garden door. They all have their secrets, and no one wants the lady of the house to know. Mere days in this position are enough to tell Peg that the old woman is a mad old bully. The first day the woman is all smiles, the next she screams when a window is not cleaned to her satisfaction. It’s enough to drive a girl to distraction, but really, it is not so unfamiliar. Her father, in the drink, could out-yell her employer any day of the week.  
   
She’s had the job seven months when she finally gets time for a visit to her family. It’s not so far away, but she would not chance a trip until the old bat countenanced it. Peg has done enough to keep her job, the wait is little more. She helps her mother with dinner, and rages at the cruel whims of her employer to the only person who will not judge her for it. She explains as she slides a knife through three potatoes and a handful of carrots, someday she’ll be a great lady. She’ll have a house, and staff, and treat them well. Call them by their proper Christian names, and help them to get ahead in this life. Her mother laughs.  
   
Then, making sure no one is peeking into the kitchen, she slips a small tub of hand-salve from the pocket of her dress. Her mother’s laughter turns to tears.  
   
Peg learns that night that fourteen is not too old to be put over her dad’s knee.  
   
Three months later she’s moved to another house. She’s not being sacked, exactly, her employer explains (one of her kind, weepy moods, for which Peg says a silent, grateful prayer), merely that her barrister nephew has moved into the area and hasn’t any kind of household. Peg refrains from asking where, exactly, the staff from his old home went. The knowledge isn’t worth risking the shift in mood it could precipitate.  
   
They’re kind enough, this new lot—at least, they aren’t cruel, and seem to be stable. Peg is glad enough to work for someone who doesn’t belong in the madhouse.  
   
The barrister’s wife is the most retiring creature she’s ever met, and his son a sullen-eyed young man who barely glances at the staff. The lawyer himself is a genial man of perhaps forty years. He laughs frequently, and when he catches Peg glancing through a book instead of dusting them, he says she may take any book she likes to her quarters- provided she returns it in good condition.  
   
His library is like a sudden burst of sunlight in her mind. She reads haphazardly at first, selecting books based upon interesting covers or titles, but she soon learns what she truly craves. Little by little, in her spare moments, she breathes in the words, truths her mother never could have told her, never knew.  
   
She discovers that if the barrister is alone, in his study or the parlor, she can—cautiously, ever so cautiously—put forth an idea she has read, and he will discuss it with her. She begins to feel full and quick, as if she could cut the world in two with her thoughts.  
   
It’s not so far a stretch, between loving a man’s books and feeling your heart skip a bit at his smile.  
   
Later, when there’s no way to hide her situation and her kind employer has turned her out on her ear, she claims it was the son, claims it was force, would be willing to say anything to rip the disappointment from her mother’s eyes.   
   
The trip to America is nervewracking and nauseating well before blood stains her bed. The ship’s captain is kind enough to say a brief prayer before she lets a bundle of tightly wrapped sheets tumble to the ocean, and she stumbles away from the rail before she lets herself follow.  
   
There’s a man on the ship, with bright blue eyes. She sees the sharpness in him, but he is strong, brave, and smiles when he asks her name.  
   
Margaret, she tells him, when they catch sight of Ellis over the bow.


End file.
